1. The tilt illusion, the luminance contrast effect and the colour illusion are examples of what type of contrast effect?

a) Before-effects
b) After-effects
c) Waterfall illusions
d) Perceptual illusions
e) Stationary effects

2. Which TWO of the following statements are true of simultaneous contrast illusions?

In the simultaneous tilt illusion, vertical stripes appear tilted away from the tilt of their surrounding stripes.
In the luminance illusion, a grey patch appears darker when surrounded by a dark area than when surrounded by a light area.
A purple patch appears slightly closer to blue when surrounded by red, and closer to red when seen against a blue background.
Visual illusion effects only exist for motion.

a) 1 & 3
b) 2 & 3
c) 3 & 4
d) 2 & 4

3. Which of the following is NOT the case in terms of serial and parallel processing models?

a) The serial processing model is now known to be inadequate, or at least incomplete.
b) The serial model has been replaced, or at least modified, firstly by the parallel processing model and then, most recently, by the recurrent processing model.
c) According to the parallel processing model, analysis of different stimulus attributes, such as identity and location, proceeds simultaneously along different pathways, even from the earliest stages.
d) According to the parallel processing model, the fact that there are cones and rods in the retina is evidence for multiple mechanisms that extract information in series from the retinal image.

4. When visual information about an object is perceived, which model of perceptual processing emphasizes on-going feedback between the higher centres of the brain (e.g., cognition) and the early stages of processing (e.g., sensory receptors)?

a) Recurrent processing model
b) Serial processing model
c) Parallel processing model
d) Selective adaptation model
e) Feedback processing model

a) After running your fingers over fine sandpaper, medium sandpaper feels coarser (and vice versa).
b) After listening to a high tone for a while, a medium auditory tone appears higher.
c) Holding your hand under running cold (or hot) water before testing the temperature of baby’s bath water will lead you to misperceive how comfortable the water will be for the baby.
d) After eating chocolate, orange juice tastes more tart.

a) A system of channels can only signal orientations that correspond to the preferred orientation of any single channel.
b) Perceptual information is likely to be merged via a process that combines the activities across all channels.
c) As part of the process of synthesis, channel activities are likely to be weighted according to the level of activity in each channel.
d) The merging process may find the ‘centre of gravity’ of the distribution of activity.

a) Neurons in V1 adapt to visual stimulation, so their response to a stimulus increases over time with repeated presentation.
b) The localized receptive fields and binocular characteristics of V1 neurons correlate very well with the perceptual characteristics of perceptual after-effects.
c) The neurons in area V1 are prime candidates for the mechanisms that underlie visual after-effects in people.
d) Images of complex objects (trees, houses, people) are initially analysed by mechanisms that respond to their local physical characteristics and have no connection with the identity of the objects themselves.

a) The target/distractor difference is not based on a single feature, but on conjunctions of features.
b) Search time for the target is not constant, but instead rises with the number of distractors.
c) The observer apparently searches through the display serially, scanning each item (or small group of items) successively (serial search).
d) All of the above.

9. Feature integration theory attempts to explain which aspect of object perception?

a) How we perceive individual features of objects when brain is impaired
b) How we perceive multiple colours to perceive a whole colour
c) How we integrate touch and vision
d) How we integrate individual features of objects to perceive a whole object
e) How we direct our visual attention

10. You parked your car in a large car park Monday morning. When you return to the car park Monday night, you have forgotten the location of your car. To find your green Fiesta in a large car park filled with green Volkswagons and red Fiestas, which type of visual search would you need to use?

a) Parallel search
b) Serial search
c) Conjunction search
d) Parallel and conjunction
e) Serial and conjunction

a) The rods and cones in the retina function in bright and dim light, respectively.
b) The cones are of three types, which are selective to different ranges of light wavelength.
c) The information from the cones is re-organized in the retina to give green–red and blue–yellow opponent channels.
d) There is also a group of large retinal cells alongside the smaller colour-opponent cells that respond to the difference between the luminances in their centre and surrounding regions.

a) Cells are vertically organized in columns
b) Cells are horizontally organized in straight lines
c) Cells are organized around the optic nerve
d) Cells are vertically organized by volume
e) Cells are organized in straight lines in the V1 area

a) Within the cortex, the general flow of local information runs vertically .
b) Within the cortex, information flows to cells in other layers above and below the activated cells.
c) Hubel and Wiesel (19613) discovered that all cortical neurons respond best to spots of light.
d) All of the above.

a) Livingstone and Hubel described activity in a third type of column in V2, where the cells receive converging input from the magno and parvo systems.
b) Livingstone and Hubel suggested that some columns in V2 are used for spatial pattern analysis.
c) Quantitative studies have found that perceived depth is reduced in red/green images of the same brightness.
d) None of the above – all are correct.

15. Sometimes the visual information available to us about a stimulus is ambiguous because of differences in depth, lighting or shading cues. For example, patterns of shading can create the illusion of objects as protruding from a visual field or receding from a visual field. How do we make sense of this visual information to recognize ambiguous stimuli?

a) Visual system relies on other people�s knowledge of objects to identify ambiguous stimuli
b) Visual information about protruding objects is impossible to process
c) Visual system relies on assumptions about the physical world to identify ambiguous stimuli
d) (a) and (c)
e) None of the above

16. The ability to see very small differences in the alignment of two objects is referred to as ___________.

a) Perceptual set
b) Vernier acuity
c) Perceptual template
d) Vertical organization
e) None of the above

17. Researchers have tested whether people can learn to use different search strategies by training them. What was the general conclusion based on these research studies?

a) People can learn different search strategies, but it does not improve performance overall or on tasks where a target is present
b) People cannot shift from serial to parallel processing when targets are present
c) People can learn different search strategies and training does improve performance overall
d) People can learn different search strategies, but it does not improve performance overall or on tasks where a target is absent
e) People cannot learn different search strategies

18. Which types of visual processing mechanisms involve memory, task-relevant knowledge, and personal goals?

a) Top-down
b) Bottom-up
c) Vertical
d) Horizontal
e) Parallel

19. According to groundbreaking research, how do attentional processes affect perceptual processing of information?

a) Attention creates a parallel processing of all visual input
b) All the visual stimuli is fully processed and then attention acts on this information
c) Attentional processes act early to select a small part of visual input to fully process
d) Attention is not a critical component of the processing of visual information
e) None of the above

On a vernier acuity task, humans can discern the direction of very tiny offsets, but performance deteriorates with practice.
Different types of visual search have different behavioural characteristics and depend on different brain regions.
Walsh et al. (1998) suggest that the right parietal lobe may be involved in setting up new templates in the temporal lobe for processing conjunctions of, say, colour and form.
All of the above.

a) 1 & 2
b) 2 & 3
c) 1 & 3
d) 4